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Device Debugging

Step 1: Prerequisites

Make sure that the device is connected to a SWD or JTAG debugger before proceeding. This will not work if the debugger is not connected to the device.

Step 2: Running the debugger

The make target to start debugging is make debug. In order for this to work you need to set the variables JTAG and PLATFORM.

For example if you are using the lpc40xx platform and the stlink branded debugger your command would look something like this:

make debug JTAG=stlink PLATFORM=lpc40xx

Example for lpc17xx and jlink

make debug JTAG=jlink PLATFORM=lpc17xx

Tip

For advanced users that want to use a different debugger, all you need to do in order to use it is to use the name of the debugging interface that can be found in the tools/openocd/scripts/interface/ such as the buspirate or cmsis-dap. The JTAG variable is literally the name of the file without the .cfg extension.

Tip

Successful output should look something like the following:

Info : clock speed 4000 kHz
Info : JTAG tap: lpc40xx.cpu tap/device found: 0x4ba00477
       (mfg: 0x23b (ARM Ltd.), part: 0xba00, ver: 0x4)
Info : lpc40xx.cpu: hardware has 6 breakpoints, 4 watchpoints

Error

If you see your terminal get spammed with this:

``` bash
Error: JTAG-DP STICKY ERROR
Error: Invalid ACK (7) in DAP response
Error: JTAG-DP STICKY ERROR
Error: Could not initialize the debug port
```

Then its a good chance that one of your pins is not connected.

Step 2: Using GDB

If you do not know how to use GDB here is a GDB Cheat Sheet.

At this point the board has been halted. You should be able to add breakpoints to add breakpoints at this point. A typical first breakpoint for a program is to set a breakpoint on main.

>>> break main

Next you will want to reset the program back to the start using the following command.

>>> monitor reset halt

To begin running through the program use the continue command.

>>> continue

At this point you should see the source code of your main.cpp show up. Now you can step through your code and set breakpoints using step, next, finish and continue, break, etc.

Note

On boards with a factory bootloader, when you start debugging, you will notice that you cannot see the source code lines in the gdb shell. This is because the bootloader instructions are not associated with any addresses in your code, thus you will not see source code. This is fine. Continue with the guide.

Note

Typically you would use the run command to start the code. When performing firmware testing, the run command is not needed as the code is already "running" on the remote microcontroller.

Note

You may also notice that GDB also looks a look nicer in SJSU-Dev2. Thats because we use the gdb-dashboard which is an awesome tool for doing gdb debugging in general.

Using print and set variable commands

A very helpful command for GDB is the print command.

>>> print a + 123

The statement above takes any expression and will print its result. For example one could do something like this:

>>> print sjsu::stm32f10x::TIM1->CCER

The above expression will print the CCER register value.

You can also use the set variable command to actually change those values. For example, if you are within a loop you force the loop i iterator variable to 5. You can also change register values as well.

>>> set variable i = 5
>>> set variable sjsu::stm32f10x::USART1->CR1 = 1